Grinding It Out

Dear readers, I must confess: my nipples haven't been this hard since I saw The Who play Quadrophenia at the Montreal Forum.

Grindhouse - the long-awaited double feature from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, made in homage to the titular genre - splatters against screens today in theaters (and hopefully at least a few drive-ins, if there is any justice) across North America.

I taxied across town at appropriately ludicrous speed to make a 10:00 advance screening last night, but I needn't have worried. In additon to the film's own built-in trailers for nonexistent films of the genre, the 191-minute running time was padded even further with actual honest-to-goodness trailers, making for enough time to squeeze in a last-minute bathroom break before the festivities began. (While I'm on the subject, please note that the credits for both films do not appear until the end of the double feature, so if you dash out at the end of the first film -Rodriguez's Planet Terror - you will miss some if not all of the trailer for Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the S.S.)

It's always been easy to imagine Tarantino and Rodriguez cackling with delight behind their cameras as they make their films, bringing to mind the Orson Welles quote about a movie studio being the best toy a boy could ever have. Grindhouse gives them the opportunity to play even faster and looser than usual with the rules of the game as they pay tribute to the kind of cinema that inspired them to make movies in the first place.

Needless to say, any critical arguments one could make about the films lose water when keeping in mind that these are, duh...GRINDHOUSE pictures! As such, any plot holes, underdeveloped characters, etc. are de rigeur - and to be encouraged.

Speaking of character development, though the amount of time Tarantino takes in establishing characters who are killed off in the first half of Death Proof might seem to have been spent in vain, let us not forget Marion Crane in Psycho. Her early departure wasn't just a case of an established director fucking with the expectations of moviegoers because he could, it was much more importantly a window into the fractured psyche of Norman Bates, or in Tarantino's case, Stuntman Mike (played by Kurt Russell with the zest of a hobo on a ham sandwich).

But as previously stated, such talk is only so much academic wankery. We go to Death Proof wanting to see high-speed car chases and witty banter. Check. We go to Planet Terror wanting to see zombies and Rose McGowan shooting bullets out of her machine-gun leg. Check. There you go.

Rumor has it that some of the trailers (created by guest directors Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth in addition to Rodriguez himself) may actually develop into features at some point, likely as further installments in possible sequels.

I can't help thinking how much fun it would be for other filmmakers in their social circle such as Richard Linklater and Steven Soderbergh to take their own stabs (pardon the pun) at future segments. And what the hell, why not bow down to the altar and invite the likes of George A. Romero to throw his bloodied hat into the ring? It will be interesting to see how the box office receipts turn out for Grindhouse - if it's a smash, one would have to wonder how Romero's criminally under-attended (at least in the U.S.) Land of the Dead would have fared as part of such a project.

Undoubtedly both Tarantino and Rodriguez would have no problem whipping out a wish list of retired or semi-retired directors from the genre's glory days to take another turn at the helm. Tragically, Bob Clark - director of the original Black Christmas and Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things - would have been an ideal candidate had he not been killed in a car crash this Wednesday. (It was only a few months ago that I heard him interviewed at length as a guest on WGN radio's Nick DiGilio show. Humble, gracious, witty, and insightful, Clark will be missed). As he proved with Deathdream and Romero with his Dead series, grindhouse films can serve as an ideal platform from which to take a bite out of the military-industrial complex, a lesson obviously not lost on Rodriguez (SPOILER MISSING).

And as it can be easy to forget, as often as female characters in grindhouse films ended to end up on meathooks or on their back (or both), the genre served up some of the toughest, meanest, righteous, resourceful ladies to ever grace the screen (Switchblade Sisters, re-released a few years back by Tarantino himself, is a prime example). The girls of Grindhouse are kicking ass and taking names, and you better hope you are not on the list!

-Dan Mucha